The Vampire of Haidamaque
Augustine Calmet, in his hard-to-find The Phantom World, describeds a case that, if true, provides some strong evidence for the existence of immortal blood drinkers. Part of the reason for that is the number of years the alleged vampires in the story had already been dead(or perhaps, undead). The following events were reported in 1730 by the Count de Cabreras, who was the captain of the Alandetti intantry of Hungary. However, they were supposed to have occurred around the year 1715(the early 1700s was apparently a popular time for vampirism in Europe). This is one of the few cases of vampirism where a count mentioned in the story is not the vampire.
Some of the count's men were temporarily stationed in the town of Haidamaque, and were consequently staying with the villagers(a common practice at that time). One of the soldiers(whose name is not mentioned) was sitting at a table one day with his host(the master of the house) and some of the man's friends and/or family(it is not clear exactly who the others were). On that evening, a man the soldier did not recognize came in and sat down at the table next to the master of the house. Everyone at the table seemed very nervous at this coming, and the soldier wasn't sure why that was so.
The next morning, the soldier woke up and found that his host was dead. Curiouis, the soldier asked if the strange visitor had anything to do with it. The others in the house told the soldier that the man who appeared was the host's father, who had been head and buried for ten years! Apparently, they believed he had come to take his son.
Upon hearing that, the soldier informed the others in his regiment, who then contacted the Count de Cabreras. The count was intrigued enough by the report to go the house with some of his men and a surgeon to check the facts for himself. Satisfied that the inhabitants of the house, along with the rest of the village, believed the story to be true, he went with his expedition to the graveyard. They located the grave of the house master's father, and removed the body.
The alleged vampire discovered in the grave seemed to be completely undecayed, as if he were still alive. There was no mention of skin and nails having fallen off and growing back. Also, it is mentioned in the report that his blood was like that of a living man. That was probably an afterthought caused by what happened next. The count had his soldiers cut off the vampire's head, and the preceding statement probably indicates that there was a heavy flow of blood as a result.
After the vampire was disposed of, the count asked if there were any other such creatures in the vicinity. The villagers told him of a couple of instances of vampirism. The first was a man who had died more than thirty years before. He had come back to his own house on three occasions(all of them mealtime). The fist time, the vampire attacked and drank the blood of his brother, who died instantly. The next two times, he did the same to his son and a servant, respectively. Both died as well. When they exhumed the body of that vampire, they found it to be in the same condition as the first. This time, however, the count had his men drive a nail into the head of the creature.
The other vampire the villagers mentioned was a man who had died about sixteen years before. That vampire supposedly drank the blood of his two sons, killing both of them. When they removed that body from the grave, they found that it was in a similar vampiric condition. The count, who apparently liked to vary his methods of vampire killing, ordered that the creature to be burned.
If the eyewitnesses in the precdeding case are telling the truth, and if the dates have not been distorted, there is no way the events described could be attributed to the lack of medical knowledge on the part of the count and his hunters. A body that has been in the gound for ten years could not in any way resemble that of a living person. The state of decay in the corpses buried for sixteen and thirty years would be, logically, even worse. Unfortunately, the case happened too long ago to be verified, but if taken at face value, the preceding account does seem to prove the existence of immortal blood drinkers, doesn't it?
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